Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management — Volume 10, Number 2—pp. 151 © 2014 SETAC
151
The Need for Truly Integrated Environmental Assessments
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/ieam.1532
a conclusion about an environmental system or stressor.” Multivariate statistics and Bayesian approaches to evaluating complex environmental data sets are now commonly used to explore trends and linkages between different environmental measurements and determine key uncertainties. The use of WOE or similar tools for integration of multiple lines of evidence is central to integrated environmental assessment and must be fully described (Weed 2005). Integrated assessments provide more and better answers than individual lines of evidence. Uncertainties, however, are unavoidable, in particular regarding causation. Methods for determining causation are critically important for informed management decision making. Chemical and ecological relationships in the environment must be well‐understood, for example: relationships between ecosystem services, function, and structure; relationships between laboratory and field assessments; costs of adaptation and acclimation; mechanisms of population‐level alteration (e.g., demographic bottlenecks, stressor‐induced selection); how changes in genetic diversity occur and affect populations; and, how changes in evolutionary trajectories occur and affect populations and ecosystems. Truly integrated environmental assessment is, in fact, a foundation for practicing “good and useful” environmental science. Ten years ago, IEAM was founded to fill a much‐ needed niche for publishing applied and investigative science focused on environmental management strategies, policy, and regulation. We are proud to continue serving as a forum where scientists and practitioners from academia, government, and industry can communicate the latest methods and ideas that advance environmental problem solving. We look forward to hearing from you—our valued SETAC members and environmental scientists from around the world.
REFERENCES Burton GA Jr, Chapman PM, Smith EP. 2002. Weight of evidence approaches for assessing ecosystem impairment. Human Ecol Risk Assess 8:1657–1673. Weed DL. 2005. Weight of evidence: A review of concept and methods. Risk Analysis 25:1545–1557.
Peter M Chapman Golder Associates Ltd Vancouver, BC, Canada [email protected] Bill Maher University of Canberra Canberra, Australia [email protected]
Editorial
Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM) focuses on the application of science in environmental decision making, regulation, and management. IEAM was born from the firm belief that environmental issues are increasingly complex because of the ever‐expanding number of stressors and stressor interactions arising from human activity, climate change, and natural evolution. For instance, chemicals in the environment cannot be considered in isolation without considering resulting biological interactions, physical interactions, and the overarching effects of global climate change. What is meant by integrated environmental assessments? We argue that environmental assessments must go beyond, well beyond, current risk assessment and environmental impact assessment practices. For example, it is no longer sufficient in ecological risk assessments to evaluate the interactions of a single chemical or stressor on a single species. Chemical risk assessment must identify the range of plausible stressors elicited by chemical presence in the environment and address the full range of plausible interactions on communities of organisms (e.g., competition, predation, habitat structuring). The scientific information necessary for informed, holistic environmental management decision making, including aspects of policy and law, demand full accounting of the benefits and costs to ecosystem services either gained or lost by the introduction of one or more stressors to the environment. Also essential is collaboration between different scientific disciplines and regulatory agencies. Risk assessments can no longer be measurement‐driven (i.e., studies focused on the tools available rather than the questions to be answered). Exposure assessments must be appropriate and applicable to the environmental situation and involve plausible exposure routes, stressors, and exposure doses. Given the interactions of multiple stressors as noted above, the hallmark of meaningful integrated assessment is consideration of multiple lines of evidence and the use of an approach that takes into consideration different types of relevant biological, chemical, and physical data. For example, it is not sufficient to simply measure chemical contaminant concentrations in the environment. The assessment work must include consideration of bioavailability and the potential consequences to relevant species and food chains. Similar constraints apply to other natural and human‐induced stressors. Lines of evidence need to be assessed both individually in terms of what information is and is not provided, and also integrated with explicit determination of uncertainty – exploring both patterns and processes. Such integration can take the form of a weight‐of‐evidence (WOE) determination, which is defined by Burton et al. (2002) as “the process of combining information from multiple lines of evidence to reach
151
The Need for Truly Integrated Environmental Assessments
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/ieam.1532
a conclusion about an environmental system or stressor.” Multivariate statistics and Bayesian approaches to evaluating complex environmental data sets are now commonly used to explore trends and linkages between different environmental measurements and determine key uncertainties. The use of WOE or similar tools for integration of multiple lines of evidence is central to integrated environmental assessment and must be fully described (Weed 2005). Integrated assessments provide more and better answers than individual lines of evidence. Uncertainties, however, are unavoidable, in particular regarding causation. Methods for determining causation are critically important for informed management decision making. Chemical and ecological relationships in the environment must be well‐understood, for example: relationships between ecosystem services, function, and structure; relationships between laboratory and field assessments; costs of adaptation and acclimation; mechanisms of population‐level alteration (e.g., demographic bottlenecks, stressor‐induced selection); how changes in genetic diversity occur and affect populations; and, how changes in evolutionary trajectories occur and affect populations and ecosystems. Truly integrated environmental assessment is, in fact, a foundation for practicing “good and useful” environmental science. Ten years ago, IEAM was founded to fill a much‐ needed niche for publishing applied and investigative science focused on environmental management strategies, policy, and regulation. We are proud to continue serving as a forum where scientists and practitioners from academia, government, and industry can communicate the latest methods and ideas that advance environmental problem solving. We look forward to hearing from you—our valued SETAC members and environmental scientists from around the world.
REFERENCES Burton GA Jr, Chapman PM, Smith EP. 2002. Weight of evidence approaches for assessing ecosystem impairment. Human Ecol Risk Assess 8:1657–1673. Weed DL. 2005. Weight of evidence: A review of concept and methods. Risk Analysis 25:1545–1557.
Peter M Chapman Golder Associates Ltd Vancouver, BC, Canada [email protected] Bill Maher University of Canberra Canberra, Australia [email protected]
Editorial
Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM) focuses on the application of science in environmental decision making, regulation, and management. IEAM was born from the firm belief that environmental issues are increasingly complex because of the ever‐expanding number of stressors and stressor interactions arising from human activity, climate change, and natural evolution. For instance, chemicals in the environment cannot be considered in isolation without considering resulting biological interactions, physical interactions, and the overarching effects of global climate change. What is meant by integrated environmental assessments? We argue that environmental assessments must go beyond, well beyond, current risk assessment and environmental impact assessment practices. For example, it is no longer sufficient in ecological risk assessments to evaluate the interactions of a single chemical or stressor on a single species. Chemical risk assessment must identify the range of plausible stressors elicited by chemical presence in the environment and address the full range of plausible interactions on communities of organisms (e.g., competition, predation, habitat structuring). The scientific information necessary for informed, holistic environmental management decision making, including aspects of policy and law, demand full accounting of the benefits and costs to ecosystem services either gained or lost by the introduction of one or more stressors to the environment. Also essential is collaboration between different scientific disciplines and regulatory agencies. Risk assessments can no longer be measurement‐driven (i.e., studies focused on the tools available rather than the questions to be answered). Exposure assessments must be appropriate and applicable to the environmental situation and involve plausible exposure routes, stressors, and exposure doses. Given the interactions of multiple stressors as noted above, the hallmark of meaningful integrated assessment is consideration of multiple lines of evidence and the use of an approach that takes into consideration different types of relevant biological, chemical, and physical data. For example, it is not sufficient to simply measure chemical contaminant concentrations in the environment. The assessment work must include consideration of bioavailability and the potential consequences to relevant species and food chains. Similar constraints apply to other natural and human‐induced stressors. Lines of evidence need to be assessed both individually in terms of what information is and is not provided, and also integrated with explicit determination of uncertainty – exploring both patterns and processes. Such integration can take the form of a weight‐of‐evidence (WOE) determination, which is defined by Burton et al. (2002) as “the process of combining information from multiple lines of evidence to reach
